Is it interpreted in me disease, That, laden with my sins, I seek for ease? First, Midst, and Last, converted One, and Three! I know my state both full of shame and scorn, I feel my griefs too, and there scarce is ground, In the evenness, sweetness, and flow of his The following lines are far from halting, and the couplet restricts the sense after the epigrammatic fashion of Pope and Darwin. He makes sweet music, who in serious lines He paints true forms, who with a modest heart The former chinks, or nails that fastly bind. Yet most would have the knots of stitches seen, TO JAMES I. concerning the true form of "William Browne," says Hallam, "is an early model of ease and variety in the regular couplet. Many passages in his unequal poem are hardly excelled by the Fables of Dryden." But Drummond of Hawthornden is by far his superior. His Forth Feasting, says the same competent authority, "is perfectly harmonious; and what is very remarkable in that age, he concludes the verse at every couplet with the regularity of Pope." The Forth is made to congratulate King James. To virgins, flowers-to sun-burnt earth the rain- O virtue's pattern! glory of our times! If Pict, Dane, Norman, thy smooth yoke had seen, So ever gold and bays thy brows adorn, There is not much melody in May-he is more vigorous than musical, and writes as if anxious rather for the strength of his thoughts than the flow of his numbers. But Sandys is called by Dryden "the best versifier of the former age*." Waller when he condescended to acknowledge Fairfax for his model, might have owned his obligations to the Ovid of Sandys. And now the work is ended, which, Jove's rage, I in my Fame eternally shall live. Ovid. B. xv. fol. Oxfd. 1632. Deep in a bay, an isle with stretch'd-out sides, Fenton, anxious to exalt his favourite Waller, and make good the praise he had awarded him as Maker and model of melodious verse would seem to have assigned to some of the poems of Waller too early a date; dates, which their titles rather than their contents would justify him in assigning. Johnson has noticed this, and very properly. "Neither of these pieces t," he says, "that seem to carry their own dates, could have been the sudden effusion of fancy. In the verses on the Prince's escape, the prediction of his marriage with the Princess of France must have been written after the event; in the other, the promises of the king's kindness to the descendants of Buckingham, which could not be properly praised till it had appeared by its effects, show that time was taken for revision and improvement. It is not known that they were published till they appeared long afterwards with other poems." This is as curious as it is convincing. Nor is it less so, that the flow of Waller was the result of labour, not an inherent melody-for the felicity of numbers so much dwelt upon in his miscalled early productions (first known to have been printed in the poet's fortieth year,) is not found in the only printed poem of his before the famous 45; for his verses "Upon Ben Jonson," written and printed in 1637-8, are wanting in all his after excellences. What follows is inferior to what had been done before him : Mirror of poets! mirror of our age! At leisure view and dress his nobler part. In flesh and blood so well, that Plato had Jonsonus Virbinɛ. 1638 This is not above the level of other poems in the same collection; yet the man who could write this way in 1638, is supposed to have written fifteen years before with a melody which he never afterwards surpassed. The early translations of Denham have all the faults of youth and all the faults of the age in which they were written. His Cooper's Hill an immense stride, in language and in numbers, though the first edition of 1642 wants was much of the after sweetness infused into it. This is not superior to Sandys (we quote from the first edition). As those who raised in body, or in thought The air, secure from danger and from fear; I see the city in a thicker cloud Of business, than of smoke, where men like ants Yet all in vain, increasing with their store Nor is "The Flight of the Stag," from the same poem, much superior : Wearied, forsaken and pursued at last, Courage he thence assumes, resolved to bear There are many harmonious passages in Quarles' Emblemes, first printed it is said in 1635, though the edition here quoted is the Cambridge copy of 1643. Not eat! Not taste? Not touch? Not cast an eye Why eat'st thou not what Heaven ordain'd for food? What sullen star ruled my untimely birth, Day worse than night, night worse than day appears; I moan unpitied, groan without relief; The branded slave, that tugs the weary oar, Here let us stop. That Denham and Waller improved this kind of versification, and that Dryden perfected it, there is no one to doubt or deny. But the debt that is due to Denham and Waller has been strangely overrated; they were not the fathers of this kind of verse, but the successful cultivators, and so far were they from improving our versification generally, that every kind of metre, the couplet excepted, was written with greater harmony and excellence before they wrote, than it was in their age or has since been. B. ON THE SALE OF "PARADISE LOST." "THE slow sale," says Johnson," and tardy reputation of Paradise Lost have been always mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of literary fame; and inquiries have been made, and conjectures offered, about the causes of its long obscurity and late reception. But has the case been truly stated? Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on an evil that was never felt? "That in the reigns of Charles and James the 'Paradise Lost' received no public acclamations, is readily confessed. Wit and Literature were on the side of the Court: and who that solicited favour or fashion would venture to praise the defender of the regicides? All that he himself could think his due, from evil tongues in evil days, was that reverential silence which was generously preserved. But it cannot be inferred, that his Poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly, admired." "The sale," he goes on to say, "if it be considered, will justify the public. Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions. The call for books was not in Milton's age what it is in the present. To read was not then a general amuse ment; neither traders nor often gentlemen thought themselves disgraced by ignorance. The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every house supplied with a closet of knowledge. Those indeed who professed learning were not less learned than at any other time; but of that middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, and who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was then comparatively small. To prove the paucity of readers, it may be sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied from 1623 to 1664, that is forty-one years, with only two editions of the works of Shakspeare, which probably did not together make one thousand copies. "The sale," he adds, "of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all, and disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius. The demand did not immediately increase; for many more readers than were supplied at first the nation did not afford. Only three thousand were sold in eleven years: for it forced its way without assistance; its admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities now given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; the means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its ranks." In answer to what Johnson has advanced, let us ask in his own words, "Has the case been truly stated?" The century that was satisfied with but two editions of Shakspeare in forty-one years, called for three of Paradise Lost in ten, and three of Prince Arthur in two. "That Prince Arthur found readers," says Johnson, "is certain; for in two years it had three editions; a very uncommon instance of favourable reception, at a time when literary curiosity was yet confined to particular classes of the nation." But it was no uncommon instance, for the same age demanded edition after edition of Cowley, of Waller, of Flatman, and of Sprat. There was no paucity of readers: the sale of Paradise Lost was slow because it was not to the taste of the times: our very plays were in rhyme; and the public looked with wonder on Shakspeare when improved by Shadwell, Ravenscroft, and Tate. Dryden, who wrote when Cowley was in the full blaze of his reputation, and Milton neglected and unknown, lived long enough to see and tell of a distinct change in public opinion, and Milton stand where Cowley had stood. That the sale of thirteen hundred copies of a three-shilling book in two years was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius, Mr. Wordsworth was among the first to disprove. Yet so difficult is it to eradicate an error insinuatingly advanced by a popular author, that Johnson's overthrown statement has been printed without contradiction in every edition of his Lives, and has found an additional stronghold for its perpetuity in the Works of Lord Byron. "Milton's politics kept him down," says Byron; "but the epigram of Dryden, and the very sale of his work, in proportion to the less reading time of its publication, prove him to have been honoured by his contemporaries*." But Blackmore, who wrote when literary curiosity was yet confined, if we may believe Johnson, to particular classes of the nation, has told us in an acknowledged work that Paradise Lost lay many years unspoken of and entirely disregarded. No better testimony could possibly be wished for; and as the passage has hitherto passed without extract or allusion, we shall quote it at length: "It must be acknowledged," says Sir Richard Blackmore," that till about forty years ago Great Britain was barren of critical learning, though fertile in excellent writers; and in particular had so little taste for epic Poetry, and were so unacquainted with the essential properties and peculiar beauties of it, that Paradise Lost, an admirable work of that kind, published by Mr. Milton, the great ornament of his age and country, lay many years unspoken of and entirely disregarded, till at * Works, vol. v. p. 15. length it happened that some persons of greater delicacy and judgment found out the merit of that excellent poem, and by communicating their sentiments to their friends, propagated the esteem of the author, who soon acquired universal applause +." To strengthen Blackmore in a position which is the very reverse of Johnson, there are other authorities and circumstances, less curious, it is true, but still of interest. "Never any poet," writes Dennis, "left a greater reputation behind him than Mr. Cowley, while Milton remained obscure, and known but to fewt." "When Milton first published his famous poem," Swift writes to Sir Charles Wogan, "the first edition was long going off; few either read, liked, or understood it, and it gained ground merely by its merit." But it had other assistance: "It was your lordship's encouraging," writes Hughes to Lord Somers, a beautiful edition of Paradise Lost that first brought that incomparable poem to be generally known and esteemed §." This was in 1688; and such, if we may judge the present by the past, was then the influence of Lord Somers, that in a dedication of Swift's Tale of a Tub to the same great man, the bookseller says with ill-concealed satisfaction and in a very grateful strain, “Your Lordship's name on the front, in capital letters, will at any time get off one edition." Whatever Somers did, the poem had made no great way til Philips published his Splendid Shilling, Addison his translation from Virgil, and his delightful papers in The Spectator, that seem to have written it into reputation. True it is, we must add, that it had been called by Dryden in 1674, when its author was bat newly in his grave, "one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems, which either the age or nation has produced |;" that The State of Innocence was suggested by it; that Dryden, the most popular of living poets, and the great critic of our nation, had repeatedly published his high approval, and, better still, had turned his glorieus epigram in its praise; nay more, that the Earl of Roscommon, who was dead in 1684, had written in Milton's measure and manner. Yet Johnson would have us believe that its admirers did not dare to publish their opinions! But all were not of his way of thinking; and Rymer, who was in poetry what his name would denote, could speak of it in 1678, as "that Paradise Lost of Milton's, which some are pleased to call a poem **;" and Prior and Montague, of its author, in 1687, as a + Essays, 8vo. 1716. Familiar Letters. § Spenser's Works, 12mo. 1715. Dedication. Pr. Works by Malone, vol. ii. p. 397. In another place (vol. ii. p. 403), he puts Milton on the same footing with Homer, Virgil, and Tasso. This was în 1675. See page 280 of this volume. ** Letter to Fleetwood Shepherd on the Tragedies of the Last Age, p. 143. rough unhewn fellow, that a man must sweat to read him *." This was the general feeling of the age; and the truth is, as Sir Walter Scott has observed †, that the coldness with which Milton's mighty epic was received upon the first publication, is traceable to the character of its author, so obnoxious for his share in the government of Cromwell, to the turn of the language, so different from that of the age, and the seriousness of a subject so discordant with its lively frivolities. A Christian poem, that should have found its greatest admirers and received its warmest advancement from the Established Church, met there with open and avowed opposition. Milton, hateful as he was to the churchmen for the violence of his political tenets, *The Hind and the Panther Tranversed, &c. Bayessays after quoting a liquid line, "I writ this line for the ladies, I hate such a rough unhewn fellow as Milton," &c. † Misc. Pr. Works, vol. i. p. 141. encountered in the whole collected body of established clergy, that dislike which Sprat when Dean of Westminster professed to feel at the mention of his name,-a name too odious, as he said, to be engraven on the walls of a Christian church. What the clergy should have read, honoured, and encouraged for their cloth, if not for their conscience' sake, was left in the same disregarded state by the laity, who did not profess or wish for once to be wiser than those whose duty it was to direct their minds to good and holy books, and Milton worked his way against every obstacle slowly but surely. No poem ever appeared in an age less fitted or less inclined to read, like, or understand it than did Paradise Lost . Yet Mr. Hallam is inclined to think that the sale was great for the time, and adds, "I have some few doubts, whether Paradise Lost, published eleven years since, would have met with a greater demand."-Lit. Hist. vol. iv. p. 427. C. ANNE COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA, [Died 1720,] Was the daughter of Sir William Kingsmill of Sidmonton in the county of Southampton, maid of honour to the duchess of York, and wife to Heneage earl of Winchelsea. A collection of her poems was printed in 1713; several still remain unpublished. "It is remarkable," says Wordsworth, "that excepting the Nocturnal Reverie, and a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of Paradise Lost and The Seasons does not contain a single new image of external nature." A NOCTURNAL REVERIE. In such a night, when every louder wind Is to its distant cavern safe confined; And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings, And lonely Philomel still waking sings; Or from some tree, famed for the owl's delight, She, hollowing clear, directs the wanderer right: In such a night, when passing clouds give place, Or thinly vail the heavens' mysterious face; When in some river, overhung with green, The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen; When freshen'd grass now bears itself upright, And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite, Whence springs the woodbine, and the bramble-rose, And where the sleepy cowslip shelter'd grows; Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes, Yet chequers still with red the dusky brakes; When scatter'd glow-worms, but in twilight fine, Show trivial beauties watch their hour to shine; Whilst Salisb'ry stands the test of every light, In perfect charms and perfect virtue bright: When odours which declined repelling day, Through temperate air uninterrupted stray; When darken'd groves their softest shadows wear, And falling waters we distinctly hear; When through the gloom more venerable shows O'er all below a solemn quiet grown, Till morning breaks, and all 's confused again; |